- A small recap of what happened last year regarding the project state of abandonement and the new developers joining tru the year- All significant changes/development done tru the year- Comparative pics/video 0.4.8 agaisnt 0.4.9- Thanks to everyone involved- Congrulating Christmas and new year- Download link of final 0.4.9

What's left is some news, a picture or two and we're done! The video question can be discussed later but in the meanwhile I'd upload Akien's one. (But I lack the access.)

Now about Danimal's questions:- A small recap of what happened last year regarding the project state of abandonement and the new developers joining tru the yearTo answer simply, the project had reach a stall and to make it alive again, the OD artists requested a new Windows 32 snapshot to see what they could improve.I answered the call and tried for a few weeks to make it run. Even if I had a hard time to make it compile at the time (and was rather noob with such deps), it permitted to point out certain problems, such as the need to upgrade the dependencies and report certain compilation problems upstream.Paul and I paired on this one and a first win32 snapshot went online after a month or two.Then, by getting familiar with the code and seeing it run, I couldn't leave the project like that and started proposing patches to fix this and that, helped by oln, Paul and nido at the time.But the actual momentum happened with the arrival of hwoarangmy, and soon after with Akien, who both helped coordinating the project, and for hwoarangmy, recoded half of it. While Danimal was improving the game models, eugeneloza being on the new beds, Akien being on packaging stuff and me being on upgrading the GUI.A lot of features, bugfixes and cleanups happened in very few time, when you think about it.

- All significant changes/development done tru the yearMany, IMO:- Multiplayer support for god sake!!- Rock-solid core gameplay!- Very moddable levels and creatures!- New rooms!- A functional AI that can win!- Traps!- New revamped UI!- More efficient workers and a good battle logic!- Can't you see this is a game already!! - ...

I've uploaded the source tarball to SourceForge, recompressed in LZMA (because this compression algorithm simply rocks, a shame that github does not provide it natively).Apart from gaining 5 MB, the main advantage of uploading an archive is that we can set it as the "most recent version" for Linux platforms, so that it stops proposing the old 0.4.8 binary release (I think we _do not_ want people to try 0.4.8 and think "oh, so much work left to do, I'll check it out again in two years").

I've uploaded the source tarball to SourceForge, recompressed in LZMA (because this compression algorithm simply rocks, a shame that github does not provide it natively).Apart from gaining 5 MB, the main advantage of uploading an archive is that we can set it as the "most recent version" for Linux platforms, so that it stops proposing the old 0.4.8 binary release (I think we _do not_ want people to try 0.4.8 and think "oh, so much work left to do, I'll check it out again in two years").

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:Greed or might singleplayer map doesn't have a 'free' treasury for player (1st player) & no start money to build a 1st piece. So there is no way to start it.

There is, because the first treasury tile is gratis. But indeed the gratis first tile was more a workaround to prevent players from being stuck without treasury than a real gameplay component, so I might add some treasury tiles by default.

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:Greed or might singleplayer map doesn't have a 'free' treasury for player (1st player) & no start money to build a 1st piece. So there is no way to start it.

There is, because the first treasury tile is gratis. But indeed the gratis first tile was more a workaround to prevent players from being stuck without treasury than a real gameplay component, so I might add some treasury tiles by default.

Following the DK tradition the border of the dungeon heart would function as basic treasury

Half? BTW, I'm almost done with the server side FOW. I need some more test and to find a way to handle how workers carry traps/creatures but I'm almost there. The PR should be there before next year. That will be a heavy PR to review (and test) ^^

Elvano {l Wrote}:Following the DK tradition the border of the dungeon heart would function as basic treasury

The problem is that in OD, creatures can attack rooms and kill their tiles (even for the dungeon heart). So, as a simple workaround, we decided to make the first tile cost 0. IMHO, now, we should decide if we keep the attack room behaviour or if we let kobolds claim them.

Re-tried the 'free' treasury placement. It works... but not always. Maybe this was once again connected to 'unselectable' tiles at different rotations, 'cause I could place a 'free' treasury only after rotating view 90 degs. Previous map, I tried to place it several times in different places and still had no luck, but I didn't rotate the view.

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:Re-tried the 'free' treasury placement. It works... but not always. Maybe this was once again connected to 'unselectable' tiles at different rotations, 'cause I could place a 'free' treasury only after rotating view 90 degs. Previous map, I tried to place it several times in different places and still had no luck, but I didn't rotate the view.

Why do you say it doesn't work ? You cannot select the tile you want ? The room is not free ?

Please note that if you have no money, you will have to create only 1 tile treasury. If you try something bigger, it won't work.

Yep, I couldn't display it on the front layer (like the gui). So it is displayed like any mesh on the game map and, thus, it becomes bigger when the player zooms. If we want, we can change the hand's size as the player zooms. But it would be even better to find a way to display it on the front layer...

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:The AI is much much cooler than the previous time

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:Re-tried the 'free' treasury placement. It works... but not always. Maybe this was once again connected to 'unselectable' tiles at different rotations, 'cause I could place a 'free' treasury only after rotating view 90 degs. Previous map, I tried to place it several times in different places and still had no luck, but I didn't rotate the view.

Why do you say it doesn't work ? You cannot select the tile you want ? The room is not free ?

I think it was due to unselectable tile bug... 'cause I was clicking around to build a free treasury, but it didn't show in red the price. It just wasn't created and its price was still 0.Now re-tried a few times and its all fine.HOWEVER... found another bug with this. I've created a free treasury tile. Exited to the main menu. Started a new game. Now the first tile isn't free anymore (screenshoot). It is reproducible for starting the same and different maps.

Ha! Now I get where the bodies disappear. Computer just grabs them away before they die. Finally AI ends up with 11th level creatures, while I have only 4th coool! But I also want to have a possibility to grab experienced units out of combat before they die 'Cause it's not fair BUG: sometimes computer grabs and places back the unit many times in a row. (UPD) Now I observe this one not in a battle while computer grabs from my territory and instantly places back a kretaur with awakeness 0 and hunger 100. Maybe AI tries to make it rest and feed, but in a second realizes that the battle is 'going on' and grabs it back.

(UPD)HHHO! He defeated me While all the game I was easily winning... until his not-dying units got experience.But defeat process is soooooo slow... and sooooo boring...The main reason seems to be my nearly-dead units running around and distracting opponents from destroying everything.I really doubt anyone would ever have that much patience to wait that long (longer than the whole game).It is fun to slowly overcome you enemy. But defeat should be much faster.

(UPD) when the bodies are transported to the crypt they jump around wierdly from one side of the room to another.

(UPD) Somehow the AI finds it hard to go through a 'one-tile with, one-tile long' passage. Had to dig a way for it, to let it defeat me

(UPDUPD) Finally the've destroyed my dungeon temple&portals (had to help them by removing tiles creating the narrow passages). But I didn't get any message, just a modest 'your dungeon temple has been destroyed' message in the message box, which doesn't fit into the box.(UPD+) Hmm... another map showed me a 'server chat message' You've lost the game.

(UPD) Aren't traps working? None of those I've built ever triggered... Tried all the 3 types.While my cannons were never an efficient way of defence... I remember at least spike traps working in previous versions... Now they all just stand still until destroyed.Re-checked: enemy canons work perfectly and efficiently as always.

(UPD) When multiple kobolds claim tiles they sometimes 'claim already claimed tiles'. I.e. a kobold goes to the tile another cobold has just claimed and tries to claim it again.

(UPD) It's much better now with enemy canons destructible. Earlier on they were extremely hard to kill.& Dragons&co don't get stuck now as I've written in some previous version.

(UPD+) Enemy base construction seems to be based on proximity to the temple, but not to the nearest tile. I.e. see screenshoot - the AI created an absurdly long passage to sleeping chamber.

hwoarangmy {l Wrote}:HOWEVER... found another bug with this. I've created a free treasury tile. Exited to the main menu. Started a new game. Now the first tile isn't free anymore (screenshoot). It is reproducible for starting the same and different maps.

I cannot reproduce. But my version is pretty modified (with fog of war) so it might be different. however, it might be interesting to try when my PR got merged because this logic has changed.

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:Ha! Now I get where the bodies disappear. Computer just grabs them away before they die. Finally AI ends up with 11th level creatures, while I have only 4th coool! But I also want to have a possibility to grab experienced units out of combat before they die 'Cause it's not fair

Yep, the AI tries to grab the weak units and drops them in the dungeon heart. Usually, they go to sleep.

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:HHHO! He defeated me While all the game I was easily winning... until his not-dying units got experience.But defeat process is soooooo slow... and sooooo boring...The main reason seems to be my nearly-dead units running around and distracting opponents from destroying everything.I really doubt anyone would ever have that much patience to wait that long (longer than the whole game).It is fun to slowly overcome you enemy. But defeat should be much faster.

Yep. Maybe that should be changed by balancing units.

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:(UPD) Somehow the AI finds it hard to go through a 'one-tile with, one-tile long' passage. Had to dig a way for it, to let it defeat me

The problem is about vision. The visible tiles are wrongly computed. In a 1 tile corridor, creatures only see 1 tile around. Because of that, they don't see attackable units even if not very far.

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:(UPD) Aren't traps working? None of those I've built ever triggered... Tried all the 3 types.While my cannons were never an efficient way of defence... I remember at least spike traps working in previous versions... Now they all just stand still until destroyed.Re-checked: enemy canons work perfectly and efficiently as always.

Have you built a forge ? When you place a trap, you need a forge to craft the trap. Moreover, the creatures won't go to forge to work y themselves. You need to drop them (until we deal the issue about creature behaviour).

eugeneloza {l Wrote}:(UPD+) Enemy base construction seems to be based on proximity to the temple, but not to the nearest tile. I.e. see screenshoot - the AI created an absurdly long passage to sleeping chamber.

Btw, I'll update the game version to 0.5.0 in the development branch when hwoarangmy's PR will be in. (I do think too that we should do a network play to test the new FOW and make sure everything stays reliable enough for the brand new server logic.)

News draft proposal:Feel free to propose improvements so we can put that on the website and move on with the 0.5.0 development:

Ho Ho Ho, Dear awful Keepers and fearful Keeperesses,

We wish you a merry, jolly and vicious torture time with you dreadful minions. And to help you process the knight's laughable will into madness with more ease and pleasure, we are utterly satisfied to introduce you to the new version of our favourite dark magic tool. Yes, OpenDungeons 0.4.9 is now released:

General changelog:- Multiplayer support for demons sake!!- Rock-solid core gameplay!- Very moddable levels and creatures!- New rooms!- A functional AI that can win!- Traps!- New revamped UI!- More efficient workers and a good battle logic!- The game is very playable already! - More at: https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDungeons/issues/9

So, what has happened all this year already?To answer simply, the project had reach a stall and to make it alive again, the OD artists requested a new Windows 32 snapshot to see what they could improve.Bertram first answered the call and tried for a few weeks to make it build and run again on Windows. Even if that guy had a hard time to make it compile at the time (and was rather a noob with such deps), it permitted to point out certain problems, such as the need to upgrade the dependencies and report certain compilation problems upstream.Paul and him then paired on this one and a first win32 snapshot went online after a month or two.Then, by getting familiar with the code and seeing it run, Bertram couldn't leave the project like that and started proposing patches to fix this and that, helped by oln, Paul and nido at the time.But the actual momentum happened with the arrival of hwoarangmy, and soon after with Akien, who both helped coordinating the project, and for hwoarangmy, recoded half of it (and more changes to it are incoming). While Danimal was improving the game models, eugeneloza was on the new minions beds, and Akien was on packaging stuff and Bertram was mainly on upgrading the GUI.A lot of features, bugfixes and cleanups happened in very few time, when you think about it before this beast went out.

Let's take a few lines to thank the cool team that gathered here and poured a lot of blood into th development evil cup to produce this. Hopefully, they will never realize all the foolishness it is to think they're leading the project while everybody knows Danimal is secretly pulling all the strings.Development didn't go without brain damages, though. Bertram developed an unexplainable and pathetic fear for Big Knights, eugeneloza had to use his big voice, and Akien even had to start learning how to code.

But a lot is also planned for 0.5.0 with almost completed addition of an actual Fog of war thanks to hwoarangmy, some work on the GUI, on the materials, on more rooms, on user settings support, ...If you're simply curious or better if you wanna help, test, or document the next version, feel free to have a look at the issues at github, and get in touch!https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDungeons/issues

Some crazy guy willing to work on improving the visuals would be perfect but we'll always find a use for you, be it on testing, or down below the dungeon, tortured with some lava. ;>

Indeed, Christmas isn't easy for everyone, and don't hesitate to take some time out of the project if you need it. Even if we somehow are only lines of text on the free game dev forums, I hope you know we all love you guy (not in a sexual way as a matter of fact. ;D).As for the website, I guess the only one to be able to answer is Elvano. I'll forward the question to the communication topic.

The december version includes another room (Cript - in need of graphics ajustement), a new hero model and the traps system overhaul.Use this photo as well to show the revamped models that are final (the old are still around, but due to retirement when possible)